must be got rid of somehow, even if it has to be pulled down. This is nothing like so wild or costly an expedient as it sounds. At the worst the cost of demolition and the sale of materials would balance. Taking the capital cost of a moderate augmentation of stipend if the old house had been allowed to remain, and adding to it the difference (capitalised) between the rates on the old house and the new and the difference in the annual contribution under the Dilapidations Measure, and you have gone a good way towards the cost of building the cottage vicarage.

Modification of tenure, which would facilitate movement from one benefice to another, is a far more difficult matter. Other reforms are closely connected with it-the revision of Church Law and the Ecclesiastical Courts, the method of making appointments to the Episcopate; and it is not likely that the House of Clergy of the Church Assembly will consent to any modification of the freehold until such other questions are settled and they can see a clear road ahead. A great deal can be done in the meantime, and under the existing tenure clergy will not decline to move from one parish to another if the move is obviously to their advantage. The common complaint is not that they are too often uprooted, but that they are not given the opportunity to move as much as they would like.

The glebe house, in the minds of present day Englishmen, is associated with the identification of the clergy with the gentry and with the thought of the Church of England as a class organisation. This association of idea by no means represents accurate history. If during the last century it had some foundation of fact, it has none to-day. But there is still a widespread feeling in ecclesiastical circles that the vicarage house represents a standard which ought not to be departed from, that it is bound up with the dignity of the clerical profession, with its social status and prestige, and so forth. And this although there is not the remotest chance of the clergy being able in the future to live up to it. It is far wiser to recognise facts. The need of the future for the Church. of England is a priesthood wholeheartedly devoted to its sacred duty and doing its work with efficient thoroughness. There is no necessity for the ministry to be well paid, and, to do them justice, that is the last thing which the clergy desire. They knew when they were ordained that they had nothing to look forward to in that respect. They have, however, a right to expect that they will be allowed to do their work under conditions which enable them to produce work of the best quality. Some few men can work and be happy in a pigsty; most are dependent to some extent upon environment. The large, comfortless, ill-furnished rooms with inadequate fires, with an outlook on an untidy wilderness of garden, which is the common result of living in a house too

big for the income which goes with it, is not conducive to the best work. The knowledge that his wife is overworked, and is unprovided for in the future, or that he has round his neck a load of debt, still further detracts from a priest's all-round usefulness.

A small house and humble establishment involves no loss of social status or prestige. The commercial class in towns and in the neighbourhood of certain industrial centres where 'money talks' may occasionally, but not often, make mistakes, but the English peasantry and working people in general possess an unerring scent for breeding and will not be taken in, however large or small the establishment a clergyman keeps up.

It is not much use to look for a lead in this matter from the clergy in the Church Assembly. The House of Clergy consists of some 300 of the most well-to-do clerics in England. One third are dignitaries holding the better-paid posts. To hold the office of proctor, unless a man lives within easy reach of London, costs 50l. or 60l. a year or more. Only clergy who do not feel the pinch of clerical poverty can accept office. They are well aware of the facts, so well aware that they have ceased to be seriously perturbed by them. They would like to see things altered, but they have been brought up to dislike above all things taking strong and drastic action. Their disinclination to act is accentuated by their not liking to appear to be fighting for their own hand.

The laity, on the other hand, have the welfare of the clergy at heart. They are not so fully aware of the facts of the case, but they have a stronger and readier grasp of a subject from the business point of view, and when once facts are brought home to them they do not hesitate to act quickly and with decision. As is shown by the progress of the Pension Scheme, they are inclined to thrust upon the clergy what they consider is good for them, whether the clergy like it or not.

It is in the hope that the laity, inside the Church Assembly and without, will realise the need for immediate and strenuous action, and will get to work, that this article has been written.

H. CHALMER BELL.

THE ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT

A REPLY

In an article published in the September number of The Nineteenth Century Mr. L. F. Easterbrook reviews what he considers to be the failure of agricultural co-operation in England, and draws the conclusion that joint-stock companies are likely to provide farmers with the necessary business organisation which, he states, they have failed to secure through co-operative societies.

At the present time the methods of marketing agricultural produce in England are being reviewed with care both by the Government and by agriculturists, and it is important that all information given to the public on the subject should be accurate. It is, therefore, especially unfortunate that Mr. Easterbrook has not been more careful in his statements. Apart from matters concerning only English agriculture, to which it is intended in the main to confine this article, two misstatements by Mr. Easterbrook are so seriously misleading that they require correction. He states that in Ireland co-operation gained no ground so long as agriculturists had a landlord behind them.' The first Land Act to effect appreciably the conversion of Irish tenants into freeholders was the Irish Land Act of 1903. At that date the agricultural co-operative movement in Ireland was in its fourteenth year, and consisted of 840 agricultural co-operative societies with a combined annual turnover of one and a third million pounds.1 The movement also had its non-trading headquarters in Dublin, and its own weekly paper, the Irish Homestead. During the five years immediately preceding the passing of the Irish Land Act of 1903 the number of agricultural societies increased threefold and their combined turnover was doubled. During the five years immediately after the passing of the Act the corresponding increases were in the number of societies, about 5 per cent. (from 840 to 881); and in turnover, about 70 per cent. (from one and a third to two and a quarter millions approximately).1 Mr. Easter

1 Vide Report of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society for year ending March 1923, Table XIII., p. 129.

brook's contention that agricultural co-operation cannot be expected under the landlord and tenant system therefore finds no support from the experiences of Ireland.

Later in his article, in support of his advocacy of joint-stock companies, Mr. Easterbrook writes, they exist in Canada, where our kinsmen have preserved the same love of individualism,' the inference being that Canadian farmers have not adopted co-operative methods.

The following extract from a speech made at a Conference of agricultural co-operators at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, on July 29, 1924, will suffice to correct Mr. Easterbrook's interpretation of current Canadian methods. In moving the following resolution, which was subsequently carried unanimously by the conference,

That a complete system of co-operative marketing of agricultural produce involving the group pooling and regulation of supplies is necessary if producers are to secure fair returns from their produce,

the Hon. Charles A. Dunning, Prime Minister of Saskatchewan, and formerly the first general manager of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, said:

. . . You cannot go on year after year losing money on your farm and getting deeper into debt; there is only one end to that, your mortgagee will put you off. So half the farmers of Saskatchewan, more than half the farmers of Alberta, and nearly half the farmers of Manitoba have banded themselves together in what is called the Co-operative Wheat Producers, Limited, for the purpose of marketing their wheat-they are not touching any other grain at present, just wheat. They bind themselves each one in an ironclad contract to turn over to the pool every bushel of wheat they produce for sale for the next five years. There is nothing in the contract regarding what the pool will pay them for it—that cannot be determined. The pool, composed of themselves, merely agrees in the contract to make an initial payment when the wheat is delivered, to sell all the wheat of all the farmers to the best advantage, and then to return to those producing it pro rata any balance remaining on hand over and above the initial payment.

Mr. Easterbrook has evidently not been closely associated with the agricultural co-operative movement in England, for his description of the two central federations of the movement is wholly inaccurate. First, he states that the Agricultural Organisation Society was created by the Government to educate the rural population in the potential benefits of agricultural co-operation.'

The facts are as follows. The Agricultural Organisation Society was established in 1901, by private enterprise, as a non-trading body for the promotion of better business methods among English farmers, especially in respect of the purchase of

Agricultural Co-operation in the British Empire, p. 174: Survey and Report of Conference, 1924, issued by the Horace Plunkett Foundation (Routledge).

farm requirements. It was financed for seven years by private subscriptions and the affiliation fees of the agricultural co-operative societies which it caused to be established. The subscribed income of the society began in 1908 to be supplemented by State grants in respect of small holdings, and subsequently by grants made under the Development Act of 1909. Throughout its career of twenty-three years, however, the Agricultural Organisation Society was a voluntary organisation, independent of State control. By 1924 agricultural co-operative societies had become established in most parts of England, and a central propagandist body was no longer essential. Among the existing societies, those which were prosperous objected to subscribe to a central society, a chief function of which had become to advise the less efficient societies. The State also was not prepared to pay for such work, which, in a co-operative movement, ought to be selfsupporting. While the foregoing circumstances were indicating to an increasing extent that the Agricultural Organisation Society had completed its work among farmers, an alternative organisation, the National Farmers' Union, had been steadily gaining ground. At the same time the Ministry of Agriculture, which for a long period had been active in the scientific and technical branches of agriculture, decided to develop its economic section by establishing a branch to deal with marketing and co-operative organisation.

3

Accordingly, in 1924 the Agricultural Organisation Society arranged to continue its work only in respect of allotments and small holdings. Its activities in respect of farmers' co-operative societies were brought to an end, administrative and executive work being taken over by the National Farmers' Union, while the Ministry of Agriculture undertook the investigation of marketing and co-operative methods.

Mr. Easterbrook is equally incorrect in his description of the second central society of the agricultural co-operative movement, the Agricultural Wholesale Society. This he describes as ‘a parent society' formed to buy in bulk for local affiliated societies, and as having done excellently so long as the war lasted.' The facts are that the Agricultural Wholesale Society was not established until 1918, the year in which the war terminated, and, far from being a parent society, it evolved by an exactly opposite process.

Every argument which can be used to cause farmers to pool their marketing by forming local co-operative societies applies with equal force to the societies as regards the federation of their

• The parent society was wound up, and a new society, consisting of the same personnel as the allotments and small holdings branch of the parent society, was registered as 'The_Allotments Organisation Society.'